With that, I took the biggest gamble of my life in many visits to Las Vegas over several decades: I jumped off the 855-foot-high tower deck of the Stratosphere Hotel.

And it was awesome.

Considering the highs and lows of plunking your money down on the tables or feeding it into the slot machines at the casinos, the $119.99 for SkyJump seems like a sure thing. Unless you chicken out — you get a certificate with a clucking fowl on it verifying this — because you simply cannot force yourself to jump into the void, it’s pretty much a given that you will know what it feels like to free fall until you’re about 40 feet away from the ground.

That’s when SkyJump’s descender cables kick in (you won’t notice it at all; the cable action is based on your weight, which will be in kilograms in Sharpie on your wrist). Along the way, a couple of guide wires keep you from splatting into the building, as well. Meanwhile, your friends and a bunch of lily-livered bystanders cheer and jeer from the launch deck and on the ground, which arrives mighty quickly.

The hardest part is that moment when you’re looking down at the teeny-tiny cars and people. Fortunately, it’s a very fast moment, because the folks who have checked (and double- and triple- and even quadruple-checked your harnesses and descender cables) start the countdown the second your toes hang over the edge.

SkyJump is just one of the many options for thrills away from the casinos in Vegas. Bet you can’t do them all in one weekend, like we did.

Kyle Wagner worked at The Denver Post from 2002-2014. She joined as the restaurant critic and food writer after nine years as restaurant critic for Westword. Her passions for mountain biking, hiking, snowboarding, skiing, river rafting, exploring the world — and anything that gets her out of the office — made transitioning into travel and fitness a perfect fit.